China’s Universal Periodic Review Tracks Its Influence At The UN

Executive Summary

• Analysis of trends across three previous UPRs (2009, 2013, and 2018) suggests an increase in PRC influence in the UN. Over time, there has been an increase in approving questions from PRC-friendly states, diluting criticism and highlighting the PRC’s ability to garner international support.
• Across the three-hour review of human rights, each UN Member State has less than one minute to ask questions of the PRC, making it difficult to effectively raise concerns about its human rights record.
• The next UPR of the PRC is scheduled for January 23, 2024, in Geneva, providing a politically significant event to analyze China’s relations with other UN Member States.

On January 23, 2024, the United Nations (UN) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will take place in the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room at Palais des Nations in Geneva (OHCHR, Accessed January 15). The UPR is a small but politically significant event which can be productively analyzed as a litmus test for the state of PRC’s relations with other UN Member States in addition to its role as a tool for raising awareness about human rights and providing accountability. The last review was in 2018.

The UPR Process

The UPR itself is a three-hour review of human rights in the PRC conducted by all other UN Member States. In preparation for this, the UN Secretariat invites NGOs to make submissions concerning human rights in China, which they publish (United Nations, accessed January 16). They also publish a summary of these NGO submissions in a stakeholder report, which is released alongside a report of the UN’s findings on the PRC (a compilation of the UN’s statements, reports, and findings on the PRC since the previous UP), and the PRC’s own national reports (United Nations, accessed January 16).

The review is further facilitated by a ‘troika’ of three States. For the 2024 UPR, these states will be Albania, the United Arab Emirates, and Malawi, a trio which has raised concerns about the neutrality of the process (United Nations, accessed January 16).

The review session will include statements from the PRC and the UN Secretariat based on their coordination and compilation of information. Next, all UN Member States can make a comment, typically by providing a Recommendation to the PRC. Such a Recommendation should ideally provide constructive suggestions for how the PRC might improve their human rights policies and practices. However, these comments are heavily politicized and range from serious criticism of the PRC’s human rights violations to abstentions and to compliments on the human rights record from the PRC’s friends. Furthermore, because so many States want to make a comment, and the time is divided to accommodate all speakers, each State is expected to speak for 45–55 seconds. States can also submit Advanced Questions before the day of the review, which can further highlight specific issues.

Diplomats regularly express their frustrations at the limited amount of time. Not only is it not sufficient to address the PRC’s human rights record, it is diluted by the PRC’s friends who use their allotted time for comments that many see as time-wasting. Thus, the result of the UPR is a series of very short comments, reflecting thin distillation of a State’s human rights and other priorities in relation to the PRC. Some of these will be adversarial, whereas others will tow the PRC’s line and language. The UPR can therefore be productively analyzed as a litmus test for the PRC’s relations with the UN and its Member States.

 Trends Across Three Previous UPRs

The 2009 UPR

In 2009, the year of the First UPR Cycle, the PRC was in a vastly different era. Domestically, the 2008 Beijing Olympics had just ended, Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) was the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese President, and despite human rights violations, the West was optimistic about China’s rise (see for example, China Brief, May 15, 2009; China Brief, September 22, 2008).

The UN produced a 16-page summary of the NGO submissions (United Nations, January 5, 2009) which included (racial) equality and non-discrimination, liberty and security of the person, administration of justice, including impunity and the rule of law, right to privacy, freedom of religion or belief, expression, association and peaceful assembly, and right to participate in public and political life, right to work and to just and favorable conditions of work, and others.

Hong Kong is mentioned in five of the submissions. Many of the Mainland Chinese NGOs were officially registered in “Hong Kong, China,” which reflects how the city was seen as a distinctly separate, safer, and freer place for human rights advocacy. A Hong Kong Human Rights Commission constituted a coalition of 11 NGOs, while the Tibet UPR Forum and the Tibetan Women’s Association coordinated joint NGO action (these latter two are diasporic groups). Tibet is mentioned 11 times, and Xinjiang four times. The UN’s own report included just one mention of Hong Kong, seven mentions of Tibet, and two of Xinjiang/Uighur people (United Nations, December 16, 2008).

In their national report, the PRC’s “basic position on human rights and the situation of human rights in China” included urging the international community to “respect the principle of the indivisibility of human rights and attach equal importance to civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights as well as the right to development” (emphasis added). The PRC reiterated their commitment to “engaging in exchanges and cooperation with other countries in the field of human rights and to promoting the adoption by the international community of a fair, objective, and non-selective approach to the handling of human rights issues” (emphasis added) (United Nations, November 10, 2008).

We can trace the origins of the PRC’s current international legal language on human rights to documents such as these. However, what was decidedly more subtle in 2008 is now much more aggressive and uncompromising, especially in their selective insistence on certain rights while undermining or dismissing others. Notably, the earlier language still acknowledges the indivisibility of human rights and their equal importance, and promotes the PRC’s position as a different perspective rather than as a radically different framework in the form it takes today.

The 2013 UPR

By 2013 and the onset of the Xi era in China, the PRC’s political and human rights circumstances had changed, as had its relationships with the UN and the international order. This is reflected in the UPR reports and recommendations. The UN’s summary of stakeholder submissions was now 18 pages long, indicating an uptick in NGO submissions and wider range of topics. However, both NGOs and the UN could now critique the PRC’s reaction and responses to the first review. Here certain promises made by the PRC had not yet been met. This suggests that while the UPR is a helpful benchmark for accountability, the lack of enforcement mechanisms leave little incentive for States to change their behavior beyond “naming and shaming” (United Nations, July 30, 2013).

Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet are listed several times in the 2013 report. The establishment of many new Hong Kong organizations to report on the local situation (as opposed to Mainland Chinese or international NGOs based in the city) was a significant development. Hong Kong was a hub where one could be close enough to Mainland China and yet report what is happening to the outside world. The report also includes an increasing number of NGO submissions from the PRC, and PRC-friendly states such as Cuba, which submitted positive reports on the human rights situation.

The PRC’s national report echoed the 2009 submission, highlighting efforts to promote and protect human rights in the PRC. It explained that “The Chinese Government is working to explore paths for human rights development, establishing a robust system of human rights safeguards, and continuously enriching the theory of human rights, all within the framework of socialism with Chinese characteristics” (emphasis added) (United Nations, August 5, 2013). The evolution of the PRC’s human rights language here indicates that human rights are no longer seen as “indivisible and equal,” and now depend on the PRC framework.

The 2018 UPR

The PRC’s most recent UPR reflects a rapidly changing regime, including its internal and external stance and behaviors, which are reflected through the lens of human rights. This regime is now an emerging global superpower that strives to shape international law and norms surrounding human rights and beyond, rather than just comply with them (China Brief, March 26, 2018; China Brief, June 5, 2018).

The UN’s third report of NGO submissions was 20 pages long and contained critical omissions. Apparently due to PRC pressure on the UN Secretariat, the omissions related to seven NGO submissions regarding human rights violations of the PRC’s Uyghur population (Human Rights Watch, November 5, 2018). The UN Secretariat later amended the report by adding a Corrigendum with the relevant information, albeit too late. (United Nations, November 5, 2018). Within the report, Hong Kong is mentioned ten times, while Tibet is mentioned five times and Xinjiang twice. Given the deterioration of human rights in the intervening years across these regions, these comparatively low numbers are reflective of PRC pressure (United Nations, September 3, 2018).

The PRC National Report expresses its support for the UPR and efforts in implementing the 204 out of the 252 Recommendations that they accepted in the Second Cycle. On the linguistic front, there is a new and substantive section on “The concept and theoretical system of human rights with Chinese characteristics” which elaborates on how human rights are “Guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” This means that “China attaches great importance to the promotion and protection of human rights, ever acting as an advocate, practitioner, and promoter of the cause of protecting human rights and always following the road of developing human rights with Chinese characteristics” (emphasis added) (United Nations, August 20, 2018). Brave readers can click the hyperlink to read all seven paragraphs about this in detail. This markedly different language elevates Xi Jinping’s directives above any legal framework governing human rights in the PRC.

Data From Previous Advanced Questions and Recommendations

The Advanced Questions and Recommendations given to the PRC by other States at the first three cycles of the UPR substantiate these trends from a different perspective.

The table below lists countries that submitted Advanced Questions before previous UPR cycles and some of the topics (but not all) that were included.

*Indicates that the question the country asked was a ‘positive’ one, which praised the PRC’s human rights record
**On behalf of the Group of Friends on NMIRF’s (‘national mechanism for implementation, reporting and follow-up’)

Source: author’s own, data from United Nations, undated.

Initially, fewer countries submitted questions, and those questions genuinely criticized, raised concerns about, and asked for more details regarding specific topics. However, PRC-friendly states gradually began to submit questions that praised the PRC. Consider this Advanced Question, from Cuba in 2013: “China has made great achievements in the promotion and realization of the right to development. Would China share its experience in this regard?” The rapid increase of these questions reflects the PRC’s increasingly friendly relations with UN Member States and its ability to ask them to submit these supportive questions. This tactic strategically distorts the historical record and takes up time which could be spent addressing genuine human rights violations in the PRC. The PRC uses this to dilute and distract from criticism. Similarly, the oral Recommendations made by UN Member States at the UPR reveal that the PRC is able to garner increasing international support and influence States to endorse their strategies at the UN, rather than constructively criticize the PRC despite this being the main purpose of the UPR.

There are other trends which hew more closely to the spirit of the UPR process. These include more countries asking the PRC to comply with international law—one of the core goals of the UPR process—and an increasing interest in Hong Kong and Xinjiang as the human rights violations worsened, drawing more coverage in international media.

Tracking Recommendations that begin with “Continue” can help quantify these trends. Such Recommendations generally imply that the PRC is doing well in its human rights and should continue with the same efforts. For example, in 2018, the Russian Federation recommended that the PRC “Continue to improve its system of legislative protection of human rights in accordance with its international obligations”—a very strong endorsement of their human rights policies and a testament to their friendship. Meanwhile, New Zealand recommended that the PRC “Continue to reform towards abolition of the death penalty.” This is a sign of encouragement, although perhaps overly optimistic. (New Zealand’s other recommendations were more critical.)

Source: author’s own, data from United Nations, undated.

Analysis of these Recommendations indicates that the PRC’s supporters at the UN have grown enormously, particularly in Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Beyond dramatic regional changes, the analysis demonstrates which individual Member States consistently support the PRC in this forum versus those who have only done so recently or sporadically. Member States listed in just the first column appear to be less optimistic about the PRC’s desire to improve their human rights record today, compared to 2009.

There are many alternative ways to analyze the data. For instance, focusing on a specific topic or on more nuanced language would reveal trends between the PRC and the UN Member States in more detail. In particular, it would be fruitful to map this data onto those countries who have signed up to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This would measure any shift in how Member States support the PRC at the UPR after signing on to Xi’s flagship foreign policy project. This could also elucidate how the PRC uses its language around human rights—especially the right to development—in both the BRI and at the UN.

Conclusion

The UPR serves as a useful litmus test for measuring the PRC’s relationships with UN Member States and how they have evolved over time. At a minimum, data from UPR submissions over the last fifteen years can be used as a proxy for states’ public friendliness toward the PRC. However, it has potential to substantiate more granular analysis, in particular when cross-referenced with other data and trends related to the PRC’s global expansion and global governance.

The Fourth UPR cycle, taking place on January 23, 2024, will provide an update on these positions and trends including a wealth of additional data across Advanced Questions, UN statements, and Member States’ Recommendations. These will enhance our understanding of the nature and scope of China’s influence across the world.